I WIsh I Had Hulk Hands · 4:19pm Aug 31st, 2018
I love this video with every fiber of my being. It needs to be spread throughout every corner of the Internet.
As a bonus:
Recentish things I've heard people call "plot holes"/ say that they "break the episode/movie" which actually don't do that, they're just salty that things transpired either "illogically" or the way they didn't want them to:
- The ponies not having a 300-style battle during the Canterlot Invasion at the beginning of The Movie(tm)
- Spike not going with the girls to visit Starlight's Town during "The Cutie Map"
- Rarity calling on Applejack to be her focus group in Honest Apple
- The Shadowbolts realizing the error of their ways after a single talk with Rarity
- Starlight's backstory. For 3 years. I can't. (Hell, I've done this one, yet since repented. Two months ago.)
- The entirety of the Season 8 premiere
- ...the entirety of Princess Celestia, for that matter
- Spike not having his memories shown getting erased in Forgotten Friendship, yet not telling the others because he totally would have been able to solve the ENTIRE SPECIAL WHICH SPANS TWO DIMENSIONS BY HIMSE--I don't fucking know
- You know, now that I think about it, some Spike fan somewhere will always have a problem with any episode where Spike doesn't explicitly Save The Day and get showered with praise
...actually, to be fair, I tend to hear Fimfic complain less about "plot holes" than the characters not doing what they want them to do. Loudly.
Incessantly.
Without fail.
Every.
Single.
Day.
And that's a whole other blog.
~B
I've encountered a similar issue to the Spike thing, except the person's complaint is about Starlight not being in as many episodes as they feel she should, and that any episode not with her in it is automatically a 6/10 at best.
Those are called Spike Justice Warriors.
Not too keen on the why, but the obnoxiousness does feel appropriate.
I mean, look, add Rarity to that statement and I'd agree wholeheartedly, but No, please, no. Don't be Spike fans, my fellow Starlighters. There's no need to.
Unlike Spike fans, we already won the Main Character Wars.
Nine times out of ten, people complaining about plot holes are actually saying one of two things. Either "They didn't do it the way I wanted!" as you point out, or "I want to be spoonfed every bit of information, and actively refuse to accept even the most obvious inferences if they're not laboriously spelled out on-screen."
I've come to the conclusion that an awful lot of nerds are downright terrible at understanding stories and characterization.
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The first "SJW" designation to not be a product of paranoid imagination.
I can dig it.
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That was basically the Other Blog.
And I've been hearing these nerds on repeated loop for 7 years. Five times that if I spread it out to other fandoms.
There is so much I hold in round these parts.
Actually, I think there's an interesting meta reason for people hating Celestia.
Early in the show, she was depicted either as a motherly figure or a prankster. The former carried over the implication that she's a protecter and a nurturer, but through most of the earlier episodes when she's an active presence she's telling Twilight to do things or playing pranks. None of these were unwarranted in context, but the inconsistency meant the fandom got mixed signals, and most ended up thinking that Celestia was putting on a facade of caring while using people.
I'm glad that's faded away over time. She's really a glutton for punishment.
I see this sort of a thing as a challenge. Why shout "This doesn't make sense!" when you can make it make sense? Sometimes it even leads to story ideas!
Of course, there are times where something exceeds even my ability to justify and rationalize, but most of those happen in the comics.
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Yeah, MLP's craziness, and the stuff they leave out, is straight up where 100% of my fics come from. (If every show was as aggressively plotted as Steven Universe, fanfic would just be a chore.) Using imagination to fill in the extraneous blanks is fun as hell.
This is where you can tell the good writers on this site from the awful ones. The good ones make a story that either works with the inconsistencies to make a new story, or at worst pokes fun at the inconsistencies in a subtle, good-natured way because at the end of the day the business is never as serious as we fans think. Optimally both, IMO.
The awful ones simply take whatever episode rant they would have done on their blog and make the ponies their mouthpieces for it.
And this is why Timber Spruce continues to live in my EQG fics. Every breath he draws is a gift from me.
I've been in multiple fandoms, and still am, for years now, and, no matter the fandom, no matter what, there's always going to be people salty about SOMETHING. So I just choose to enjoy things and let others bitch about it. I have a long list of things to bitch about, I do NOT need to add to it.
And during other invasions,for that matter. The same thing (along with Luna's absence) was an issue people raised with the Canterlot Wedding episode, for example. Of course, the why for it is pretty simple: it would add to the run time, as well as the cost of the episode/movie for animating/voicing it all. So it doesn't get shown. And with the ever increasing number of characters, well, that's an issue, too. Now you have to neutralize the Mane-6, three other princesses, Discord, the Twilight Mark 2, the old geezers, and then explain why the various allied nations don't show up, and on and on. Of course, for the movie, the ease with which the Mane-6 with a few friends later pwn the invaders, without really doing anything special, doesn't speak well as to the prowess of Equestria's military, as well as going to show the plot could have been resolved by just gathering a bunch of ponies and kicking some butt. But hey, main characters gonna main character ;)
Oh, and of course, Twilight didn't know why she was off to get what she was after, just that Celestia said, "Do this!" so Twilight took it upon herself to do so. Blindly doing what Celestia says is a Twilight trait.
Anyway, things like that, why, that's why we have fan fiction, so we can tell the tale as to what happened to things that weren't shown on screen for budget/time/main-character-focus reasons.
Also, that sort of thing definitely isn't a plot hole in the FIM universe. We've never really gotten to see the military do much more than stand at their posts, so there's nothing there to indicate that they even could stop that. For all we know, they're pretty much ceremonial, and therefore no problem for the invasion force. Now, if they had established that the guard kicks butt, that they fight in formation and so on, well, then their absence would be an issue. But the more events that happen that they do nothing about, the more it is in character for them to do nothing. The guard is basically this:
Anyway, I ramble on.
No, the punching was fine... thank you for doing it.
And thank you for linking this, and blogging this. It's important information for keep in mind... and the reason I keep having to mute certain Discord channels
Where are all these Spike fans you're reading geez
I like Starlight's backstory better in retrospect now that she's been fleshed out a good deal more than she was at the time. Would've been nice to get some of that context over the course of season 5 somehow, but at least they got there in the end.
It's true, even the supposed plot holes that look severe on the surface can be fixed with a little applied imagination. And sometimes you don't even need that, because things in stories that look unrealistic often have real-life precedents.
For example, where was the Royal Guard when the Storm King invaded? You may as well ask where the Luftwaffe was during the Normandy landings in 1944, since they were nearly absent from the action. The answer: Most of them were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and most of the rest were kept away by allied fighter screens. It was a combination of bad luck on one side, and good planning on the other.
I'd bet the Guard had the same problem. But the film couldn't show that, of course, because it would bloat the runtime and be too confusing for the target audience.
Where do you find these people that complain about plot holes? Either I have a Memory Stone in my pocket and I abuse it worse than Wallflower did pre-reformation or I'm not looking in all the right places.
...Please be gentle. XD
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There is a bit of a trade off though between getting on with it and leaving it to the imagination. If the reader/viewer has to provide all sorts of details for the story to make sense, well, then the creator most likely failed at telling a good story. Rather than being immersed, the audience has stepped out of the story and is now engaged in creating their own so they can fix up yours. But on the flip side, if the creator explains every little thing, well, odds are the work won't hold most people's attention.
As an example, if I were to have an Earth Pony in Ponyville one minute, and in the Canterlot the next, I should probably explain how at some point. I should not be relying on my audience to think, "Well, obviously, said pony asked Twilight for a teleport." On the flip side, if I'm writing a Celestia story, and I've had her teleporting a long distance at least once before, then it is fine to just let the audience assume she teleported back home.
So short version: if you're asking your audience to imagine a sizeable portion of your story for you to explain why things can happen, then you've probably got a plot hole.
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You can find a lot just by searching for any given episode/special/movie in Fimfic's blog search. Otherwise, you've got the more popular character forums on this site (I advise NEVER setting foot into Sunset Shimmer's) and the rest is just stuff I passively pick up on Discord.
And also, the Starlight Drama really did last three years. It might still be going. And it was EVERYWHERE.
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Lol Luna's case was special though, they literally forgot about her until after the fact and they added her into scenes post production which is why nopony truly reacts to her in those scenes. Last scene was just a stretched out panning across the ponies scene she wasn't in originally as well. Lol
@Booky: "I since repented. Two months ago."
Yeah, Spike a Baby dragon not being zent to some potentially dangerous mission that required the ponies to travel by hoof apparently across barren terrain? I didn't think people felt that strongly about that. I wouldn't take him with either even if I felt there was a small chance he might have been useful.
S3 finale... To this day I still can't figure out if they mere woke up one day just having intruded on each other's own homes or that spell genuinely managed to implant fake memories into everypony's mind to make it feel like the affected Mane 6 were just always doing those roles since in some weird "Everypony now sees me as having actually been the pony this cutie mark belonged to" event.
Though actually changing timelines would explain the overnight disaster that was Rarity's boutique and the Apple Farm. I kinda went with altered memories but that episode was rushed like hell given it was originally written to be the final episode and it had some cute and very dark themes and left to interpretation no less, and killed off our lovable unicorn Twilight and and an-*breathes into paper bag* and would go virtually ignored and underused the whole s4 after that where writers felt they wrote themselves into a corner now.
S8 and for that matter 4-8 just felt directionless. So many people fighting amongst themselves about how to end story arcs for each character, attacking the fandom through episodes and not just that one blatant one in s7, destroying characteristics we loved about a character's iconic look or tone for shock value or giggles.
I mean, lots of fucked up shit. And there only being so many episodes, and with so many even above McCarthy's head wanting things a certain way, even at top Hasbro level, it's a miracle we got this far. They've been working on concepts for gen 5 since season 4-5 even when they were asked that question at a bronycon.
These new writers just do what they want how they want cause they get paid for it. They don't have to care or get a character. S8 first half alone was a bore with no real rhyme or reason aside from "Buy our toys!".
But yeah, this second half was fun. You can see the setup for how clever someone managed to play their move to reach the King. XD
Anyways, getting pulled away so had to cut this short. Lol 'short' but hey, plotholes can be ignored if the rest of the stuff can make up for it in entertainment and is very very very dependent on how glaring it is like damn near every scene and action taken in Star Wars Force Awakens and Last Jedi.
In written works? It's a lot harder to get away with, it happens, but a lot harder since all you have are words to maintain one's immersion.
"Plot hole" does not mean "bad idea", guys. :B
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Ah, I see. I do know (of) a couple of people who openly despise GlimGlam, and for the life of me I don't understand it. But hey, I don't want to start any drama here.
Not to mention that complaining about plot holes gets you nowhere.
Even if I myself have been guilty of it from time to time.4929119
That they forgot about her really doesn't matter. She could easily have been away on an important head of state issue that couldn't wait. Written out so Chrissy doesn't have to fight two alicorns. Though obviously, her being at the wedding would have been nice.
It's also easier to deal with 'em, though, in written form. I can toss in a single sentence somewhere about Luna being out of town, and problem solved. In an episode or movie, it has to be worked into a conversation, or at least focused on in some matter (a newspaper headline that's front and center on the screen). So maybe in a story we do have to cover our butts a bit more, but them butts be easier to cover.
Heh, people are gonna hate the season finale then if them hating Starlight's reason for destroying multiple timelines' ponies' lives over "Celestia's damn school that should be shutdown for making the most super villains" will pale in comparison to what happens in s8 finale.
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Just to curb this off now just in case--I don't watch leaked episodes or ones that have accidentally aired before scheduled airdates (so as of right now, we're up to Episode 19, i believe? And I haven't watched anything past Mean Six yet, will likely catch up tomorrow). Please don't spoil them here. Thanks!
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There's a saying that in and of itself In not against which goes, "the difference between real life and fiction is that fiction has to make sense."
It is the unspoken mantra of so many self-styled critics, but it's the worst catch-22 if you think about it for more than 5 minutes.
Also I would have just assumed that the earth pony had taken the train, and.... well,believing that any non-Fame & Misfortune episode is attacking the fandom is 1000% your prerogative if you want, but I can't help you on that one
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What fun is there in making sense?These are good points. I guess it comes down to a happy medium, like anything else. The tricky part is finding it. And of course, one must have the wisdom to know the difference between a legit criticism and someone's attempt to show how clever he is.
Fedoras gonna fedora :^)
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Not my opinion but straight from MA Larson's own mouth who felt a lot of the things being added were in bad nature.
I couldn't care less about how show staff kneejerks with a crazy fandom full of those who'd go so far as to make death threats over a colorful cartoon pony show. That said if one can't see the forest for the trees abiut it being a mouthpiece episode regardless of how people feel about it than far be from me to try and convince anyone otherwise.
Also no worries. I kept it vague for a reason. No spoilers here.
All I care about is immersion. When mannerisms, and more and more contrivances pop up eventually the viewer will just be jarred enough from that immersion. People can overlook a lot in a fanfic but tend to be more critical at the source material.
When writers or others go on twitter and start bashing people for not liking their movie with words like entitlement and other such words, that's just not a smart thing to do. Yeah, defend yourself from attacks but don't blind yourself to the fact there could have been better ways to handle something.
At the end of the day all one does is hurt the brand name, people outside looking in end up taking one side or the other and making things a worst mess than it had to be.
Yeah, a creator doesn't have to cater to fans. But nor do fans have to cater to or worship the ground a creator walks on. If we don't want to see your works than we aren't acting entitled for not wanting to part with our money for what we don't want to support.
Disney learned this lesson recently very hard. Even China took their movie out the box office after a week. And that's the last country you wanna piss off with calling its fans overly entitled.
So what ever reasoning behind the episode in pony had, good or bad, it shouldn't be excused just because it's a favorite show. Fandom has been shrinking for years and stuff like that can be viewed as toxic lashing out of show staff be you in the fandom or not anyone viewing it would laugh or miss some in-fandom jokes.
Anyways, dumb topoc is dumb. As long as the animation is cute and they don't kill off AJ in Gen5 I won't care. I stopped caring after The Lost Marks. That was the series finale far as I'm concerned. Rest is just bonus episodes.
Story matters. Especially the longer running something us, the more character builds up a certain feel and such with its audience. I'd make an example of what happens when some character says something to someone that would put them ina questionable light but I'll just have to wait a month to see a reaction from said character's fans.
Anywho, source material is taken more to heart than fanfiction. We go in knowing it's an AU or tries to share what they think happened between events. So plotholes, worst they can do, is bore the reader or ask a bunch of questions to the author. If people truly cared about plotholes in this fandom we'd a ended at s2. :p
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Well put.
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Eh, from what I've seen and heard it's just more inconsistencies about how easy some characters get off over others. LD had her redemption removed post edit for whatever reason that Thiessan wanted.
Glimmer also takes the role of what Twilight used to do before wings. She's been joked about being Twilight's replacement due to Hasbro's tight leash around what they can have Twilight do and say post Princess.
Fans of Twilight just feel she's been replace. Honestly, I felt they did enough with Twilight. I don't mind Glimmy since she's adorably self-destructive and Trixie tends not to be too far away. <3
Glimmer is just a Twilight with a violent temper that can kill a dragonequez's physical body if you annoy her enough wity words.
Show writters gonna write.
The important thing is that YOU and others enjoy her character and there is no shortage of fic with her to enjoy. Even if they tend to be more shipfic than Glimmer being awesome fics. XD
Not that ship fics aren't sweet. But one can only read so many "how Glim and X hookup" fics. XD just skip that boring part and show us what they do post hookup imo lol
I do like it when they get creative with the hookup thing with AUs, those tend to be funner. Funner funnest funnestia of fun.
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You should put that in a blog so people don't accidentally spoil things for you.
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Okay.
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I probably should. It doesn't enter my mind much because tbqh 99% of my readers know better already :3
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There's always the "you never know" factor. =)
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Good points but it was.ore ignorance than story convenience. But yeah, I complained about her enough not being used and how nopony reacted to her enough back then.
That was Cadance's finale and time to shine and sell all those wedding playsets.
I mean, if you want to point out bad writing ideas... why have Luna clearly flying out the barrier nopony can make a hole in, that shatters like so much heavy tempered glass, to go to a forest, come back at night to take up guard duty, and only show up after a massive wave of love poured over all of canterlot, and say: "Did I miss anything?"
That type of post completed episode editing and phoning in a few lines,is what leads to crazy, though fun, fan theories and interpretations. It was a cadance episode. Luna would have just ended up like Celestia had they remembered to add her, which would have upset Luna fans more than not having been in there more.
Idk I can nitpick at episodes and tear apart every joke or meaning and point out why Diamond Tiara would have foiled their plans for s8. XD
could you not tho
the above is literally what is wrong with show discussion in this fandom
it's not discussion
it's not critique
it's not analysis
it's not even entitlement
it's whining
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Bookish often complains that Spike fans causing her problems. Bookish also took time out of her, entirely non-Spike related, post to bash Spike fans three times. There might just be a relationship between those two things—and not in the direction she assumes.
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Done right. "Plot holes" can be quite the fun times. :3
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You give me way too much credit.
I'd be genuinely shocked if my once-in-thirty-blogs disdain of hardcore Spike fandom is ever even noticed by said fandom.
Like... seriously, why would they? What possible reason would they have to care?
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That's a very fast train if it covers the distance between Ponyville and Canterlot in a single minute ;) But yeah, if the time wasn't so short, then you wouldn't need to explain it.
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Not necessarily. It can just be entertainment. It all just comes down to tone and the spirit behind it.
Of course, these days, it often is pretty one sided. People are too binary. If they dislike something, then it has no good points. And the reverse is true as well... if they like it, then it must have no flaws, and any problems people see with said thing are obviously with the people themselves. And both sides hang around with people that parrot their view, and so you quickly wind up with a mob mentality.
People need to grow up and be able to look at things rationally, rather than just get mega-invested with the only options being thumbs up or down, and no ability to handle a five star system with choices in between the two extremes.
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I wasn't suggesting that your disdain attracts hardcore Spike fans. Rather, I was suggesting that your disdain causes you to readily perceive slights which are not actually present. Or to magnify those slights which are present all out of proportion to their true numbers.
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Oh, the slights are there. I hear the equivalent of "why didn't this story/episode not about Spike not have Spike in it" straight up a few times every month, whether in forum post, Discord or fic form. This isn't a lot on its own, and every once in a blue moon a valid point is even made--but if you've been privy to it since 2012, well, it's water torture. I don't say much about it because I believe in people having their fun, but I'm gonna vent every once in awhile cause when it's bad, man, it's bad. ;)
But as far as magnification goes, that's totally a fair point that I concede. I have no excuse for that one save for the above, and I don't think I ever recovered from the days of the Descendant and Lumino trying to tell me that Sparity was akin to Shining/Cadance in terms of how deep their love goes.
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100% agreed.
I had a discussion with a friend last week and we've noticed that this fandom--which is, well, a lot of nerdy dudes--are really into archival and classification.
While it means we'll never miss an episode and they'll all be of the highest quality and perfectly ordered and sorted, it also means that there's an innate drive to sort things (episodes, charactets) in "good" and "bad" piles without acknowledging that an entity can contain good and bad aspects, or even just things that you love but kind of suck, and things you dislike but are still well done. And when something is classified as "bad," instead of the fans working with it, maybe making a diamond out of coal, it gets stonewalled. (And thus it's impossible to get anyone to make Juniper Montage fanwork, Diamond Tiara fandom is always an uphill battle, etc.)
I like coming to conventions and talking with people one on one--you included--because it feels like the only way I can get some real nuance in my pony talk, and varying opinions without anger or treating stuff like a hardcore debate. The lack of nuance online is what really frustrates me at its core, and fuels blogs like the one I made today. You and I have talked and I know you get all of this, but the nature of the Internet makes it hard to gauge who is safe to talk to and who is just ranty and immovable.
Which is a shame because I otherwise LOVE me a good hilarious pop culture rant played up for laughs, and even engage in them myself from time to time. Sometimes even about this very show!
I cannot begin to express how happy I am to see this push-back against the CinemaSinsification of art analysis/critique gaining traction. Some of the smarter folks on twitter put it well: this need for Things You Personally Did Not Respond To to in fact be Plot Holes is this weird defense mechanism meant to protect against the reality that one's feelings about a piece of media are NOT in fact concretely "objective". And the sooner we can break down that need to be RIGHT more so than actually HONEST? The better.
My personal feeling on plot holes goes thusly: "Do I notice it while watching the movie/show/game/whatever? If not, then it's not a concern. If I do notice it, and this is the important part, does it negatively effect my ability to enjoy the piece of art itself? If not, then I can rationalize it (I'm good at that) and then move on. If yes however... then I am not nearly so forgiving."
All that said, while I can understand the pushback one wants to feel against the critique culture that can be summed up as "I noticed this potential flaw, DING!", the video you linked to is really not the one you want to use as an example. Other people have said it better than me (e.g. YourMovieSucks has a very long comment in the video that explains nearly everything that I consider bad about it), but the problems amount to the video author's opinion that any noticing and complaint about plot holes, big or small, regardless of context, is invalid critique.
Do I need to explain why that is a terrible position to have?
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I read the YMS comment when I originally watched the video, and dismissed it with a nonplussed shrug before posting this blog.
Summarized, the video warns against using personal opinions about art (in this case, pointing out "plot holes", usually fueled by personal "logic" values) as "objective" proof of flaws. Which is absolutely correct advice, the reasoning of which I will talk about further down. It doesn't help that half of YMS's comment was made, by his own admission, before watching all of the video. Yet, ironically, it's the part I technically agree with most. Opining on personal experience consuming fiction is a valid and fantastic thing.
But passing it off as fact is not, and even when one doesn't, as far as I'm concerned, a good critic goes deeper, analyzing even their own analyses, to find a deeper truth about either the art, themselves, or a greater life/world subject. Optimally all three. But rarely do I see folks make it to one.
YMS also argues, among other things, that such a position "invalidates" those who take the time to make sure to make things are as concise and logical as possible, etc. To which I say... fucking duh. Patrick doesn't need to do that--the world has been doing this to fiction since the beginning of time and still does so today. How many pieces of trashy fiction have been wildly popular and how many movies with carefully crafted whatever have been met with crickets? You don't even have to go past this site to see this phenomenon at work. It means that those popular things resonate with the audience in some way(s) anyway, beyond logic. And as much as I respect logic, I've worshipped at its altar long enough to know that it will only drive you crazy and you have to think wider.
Which leads us to the big "trap", for lack of a better term. Logic is a really nice thing to have, but what's "logical" to one viewer isn't to another, and the majority of art can't be discussed logically or "objectively." You can only have a discussion about personal tastes and observations, and while those tastes can be used best as part of a discussion of higher- or lower-concept topics than the art at hand (again, bigger topics like representation, etc., or smaller ones like... I dunno, tropes most often assigned to dogs), they're always going to be empirical, shaky ground to base a quality assessment of said art on. No critique is completely correct, which is why the general rule of thumb is know the critiquer's tastes and see how closely they mesh with yours.
This also means that neither Patrick nor YMS are completely correct, but I'll come down on Patrick's side of things every time, because I see way too much non-constructive ranting masquerading as critique (to be fair, often because the ranter doesn't know any better), and as a longtime critic, it's finally gotten to me. YMS's post (well, half of it) would be nice if, y'know. Anyone but a small minority practiced what he preached.
...yes, my views on entertainment and its consumption are nihilistic as all get out, but here we are.
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I'd also like to point out that people seem to have this irrational idea that the attacking forces are incompetent by default. I mean, just look at Tempest Shadow's moves. She was clearly chosen and equipped for her mission to tackle four alicorns in the middle of their capitol. If you want to take on magic users, you bring a fast melee-type, give her fast somewhat ranged disabling/anti-magic stuff, and cripple the casters before they can finger-waggle and chant you down. The only choice I'd approve of more would be if they'd taken some Hawkeye/Green Arrow archetype and sniped them.
The Storm King's army consisted of big, strong, hulking dudes. He had tons of airships. He'd conquered various other lands. He wasn't a pushover. He was a real threat. The fact that he beat peaceful ponies is not so unbelievable.
I feel like most of the criticism against the beginning of the movie is entirely dismissive of the actual danger the Storm King posed.
To tie into your analogy: the allied forces were competent. Not only were the Luftwaffe elsewhere, the allied forces actively planned for their absence and took steps with their own air-power to make that happen. The allied forces also had guns. They didn't just send a bunch of naked invalids to crawl up the beaches, they sent soldiers.
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One of these days I need to write up a blog explaining MMC. Every now and then I get reminders like this that other people don't seem to get it.
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Not much to get about the episode. It's a very rushed episode trying to fit two things into a musical montage of what would have been two episodes.
The cutie marks switched bearers giving them that holder's identity and false belief they always did these roles competently, but fall into despair when their world they feel they know which the cutie tells them is their calling simply fails them.
It's pretty cut and dry on paper but it has a load of ways it can be interpreted which I don't personally think is bad writing, but not good either if it leaves more questions than answers, imo.